My Odyssey is the memoir of Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (November 16, 1904 - May 11, 1996), usually referred to as Nnamdi Azikiwe, or, informally and popularly, as "Zik", was the founder of modern Nigerian nationalism and the first President of Nigeria, holding the position throughout the Nigerian First Republic. My Odyssey is his writing about his political, social and general lives. Azikiwe was born on November 16, 1904 in Zungeru, northern Nigeria to Igbo parents. After studying at missionary schools in Nigeria, Azikiwe went to the United States. While there he attended Howard University, Washington DC before enrolling in and graduating from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1930. He obtained a masters degree in 1933 from a prestigious Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as an instructor at Lincoln before returning to Africa
My Odyssey reveals further that after Zik taught at Lincoln, in November 1934, took the position of editor for the African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. In that position he promoted a pro-African nationalist agenda. He also criticized those Africans who belonged to the 'elite' of colonial society and favoured retaining the existing order, as they regarded it as the basis of their well being." As a result of publishing an article on May 15, 1936 entitled "Has the African a God?" written by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson he was brought to trial on charges of sedition. Although he was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to six months in prison, he was acquitted on appeal. He returned to Lagos, Nigeria, in 1937 and founded the West African Pilot which he used as a vehicle to foster Nigerian nationalism. He founded the Zik Group of Newspapers, publishing multiple newspapers in cities across the country.
After a successful journalism enterprise, Azikiwe entered into politics, co-founding the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) alongside Herbert Macaulay in 1944. He became the secretary- general of the National Council in 1946, and was the following year elected to the Legislative Council of Nigeria. In 1951, he became the leader of the Opposition to the government of Obafemi Awolowo in the Western Region's House of Assembly. In 1952, he moved to the Eastern Region, and was elected to the position of Chief Minister, and in 1954 became Premier of Nigeria's Eastern Region. On December 12, 1959, he became the Governor General, and with the proclamation of a republic
in 1963 he became the first President of Nigeria, while Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was the Prime Minister.
Azikiwe and his civilian colleagues were removed from power in the military coup of January 15, 1966. During the Biafran (1967– 1970) war of secession, Azikiwe became a spokesman for the nascent Igbo republic and an adviser to its leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu; in 1969, however, he switched to the side of the Nigerian government. After the war, he served as Chancellor of Lagos University from 1972 to 1976. He joined the Nigerian People's Party in 1978, making unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1979 and again in 1983. He left politics involuntarily after the military coup on December 31, 1983. He died on May 11, 1996 at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, in Enugu, Enugu State, after a protracted sickness.
The writings of Azikiwe spawned a philosophy of African liberation Zikism, which identifies five concepts for Africa's movement towards freedom: spiritual balance, social regeneration, economic determination, mental emancipation, and political resurgence. Highly cosmopolitan, the young Zik, a zealous Young Turk, traversed the earth in search of knowledge. His quest took him to Hope Waddell Institute, Calabar and later to Wesley Boys High School, Lagos. As is usually the hallmark of all great men, Zik was only a 16-year-old boy when his perception of life changed. That was at Methodist Church, Tinubu, Lagos upon listening to the sermon of one of Africa’s most fiery and sincere activists, Reverend James Kwegyr Aggrey. Zik would later recount his experience in his epic autobiography, My Odyssey. He wrote “after that day, I became a new man, my ideas of life changed so much that I tried in my dream, hoping against all hope for the time when it would be possible forme to be like Aggrey” .
Though the Europeans were the visitors, they became lords and masters over the native Africans, something akin to a tenant ejecting the landlord. They were hostile to Africans even on their own soil. It was in this hostile and harsh environment that Zik was born. His father was then serving in the British Army as a minor official. The rarity of Zik’s odyssey was typified by his triumph over monumental obstacles including but not limited to the mere fact that he was a young black man in a whiteman’s land.
Leave a comment behind